Posts Tagged ‘Spicy Horse’

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American McGee’s Spicy Horse studio has spent a touch more on Akaneiro: Demon Hunter than it raised on Kickstarter. Gathering $204,000 back in February last year, it seems they’ve spent $2 million on the game. I’m not an accountant, but I’m pretty sure that £2m is more than $205,000. McGee has posted on the game’s Kickstarter page that it means they’ll have to “radically alter” the future of the game.

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This is the latest in a series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

Alice: Madness Returns is a very special action game, a piece of Lewis Carroll fan fiction conceived by an American (named American, naturally) and illustrated largely by the Chinese, a people not known for their absurdism. Unfortunately it’s also a classic victim of checklist game criticism and marketing, not to mention it’s the worst possible thing to reviewers working under deadline: long. Make no mistake, the business of game reviewing is a lot like the business of eating large amounts of Jacob’s Cream Crackers in hot and rowdy East End basements. To put it another way, all games get tiring when you play them past your bedtime.

The sequel to American McGee’s Alice isn’t great (8/10), solid (7/10), flawed (6/10) or average (5/10) – it’s none of that nonsense. It’s a living art book, an Alice novel with the ratio of words to pictures spun around. Inspired by such wild and offbeat things as Burning Man, Dave McKean, Zdzislaw Beksinski, The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal and the Brothers Quay, more than anything it’s a tribute to the mechanical and the handmade. Dolls, miniatures and puppets crowd the dreams and nightmares of its Wonderland, while its ‘real world’ Victorian London would be right at home in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Read the rest of this entry »

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American McGee’s Akaneiro: Demon Hunters was Kickstarted only this February. Squeaking past its goal in the eleventh hour, it’s only four short months later that a playable build is available. For free, if you go to their own site. Or for money, if you get it from Steam. Huh? This whole odd situation asks some interesting questions about such models, and when is the right time to let people start buying your game?

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I was really hoping American McGee’s OZombie would turn out to be an undead heavy metal odyssey starring Ozzy Osbourne on a trip of self-discovery/drugs in Australia. But instead, it’s fairytales. They’ve become McGee and Spicy Horse’s calling card as of late, always with a sooty spritz of macabre. Alice went goth, Little Red Riding Hood sliced and diced demons, and now Wizard of Oz is getting a double dose of zombies and steampunk. Played out trends, sure, but I have to admit that what little McGee and co have released so far looks somewhat intriguing. A few more details after the break.

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We mentioned a while back that American McGee’s Shanghai-based studio, Spicy Horse, was developing an ARPG with an odd theme. That theme is Japanese feudalism and the tale of Red Riding Hood. If you’re not sure how those two concepts merge, then you can see in a video below for Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, which pitches McGee and chum’s proposal to the all-funding eye of Kickstarter. Given that the game is free-to-play the rewards for this are based in in-game stuff, right through to a game-themed tablet. They want $200k, which doesn’t seem too outlandish.

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American McGee. Now that’s a name. I would give his parents high-fives, but they’re probably eagles who’ve been surgically attached to giant, forever-billowing US flags. McGee’s studio Spicy Horse, however, has a slightly spottier track record. I mean, its most recent big release, Alice: Madness Returns, was chock full of imaginative locales, but it was also overly long, and platforming (kind of important in a platformer) wasn’t exactly enjoyable. So it is with much trepidation that I bring you the first trailer of Akaneiro: Demon Hunters. On one hand, just look at that. An Okami-esque hand-painted style? Glorious. I wish to stroke it suggestively and make everyone feel really uncomfortable. But Akaneiro’s also a click-click-click-a-thon ARPG, and those can become mighty tedious if not executed with tremendous attention to detail.

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There’s probably some irony in the latest title from a man whose name appeared in big huge letters on the front of so many game boxes involving the word ‘BigHead’, but I’ll be damned if I can tell what it is.

BigHead BASH is the latest move from American McGee and his Spicy Horse studio, and it’s a forthcoming social network game. I don’t know whether this means Alice: Madness Returns wasn’t the hoped-for success or just that McGee fancies a go at the Facebook goldrush before it dries up, but I do know that it’s a side-scrolling 3D shooter with tons of shooty-jumpy activity.Read the rest of this entry »

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The semi-sequel to American McGee’s Alice arrived last week. A timely return to a gothic wonderland, or is too late, too late for a very important date with our hard drives? Come on, down the rabbit hole with you and let’s find out…

Alice 2 is, I think, pretty much what an only casual observer of videogames believes almost all videogames are like. Mad monsters, lurid colours, cartoonish characters, slightly unconvincing voicework, a steady diet of jumping and thumping… Alice could be The Videogame incarnate, evoking so many of the tried and tested values and mechanics that have come, gone and repeatedly come back again over the last couple of decades, and in theory polishing them into a fantastical sheen you could see your own distorted face in. If someone showed me this game out of context, I’d have a very hard time guessing when it was released. 2011? Maybe. 2007? Quite possibly. 2001? Turn those visuals down low and yeah, this could have been a launch title for the original Xbox or Dreamcast or something. This is not necessarily a criticism.Read the rest of this entry »

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You’re late! For a very important date! The trailer after the jump has been waiting just forever for you. And look at you! Straighten that pinny! Tighten those bows! What is that in your hair? Give me strength. Alright, off you go. And do try and remember your manners.Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ll just do a little checklist here. We’ve got enormous teapots pouring out molten metal, a glutinous tar baby, Alice poking around a Victorian imagining of the Orient with a unicorn on a stick, and a Chesire cat who’s stayed largely unchanged from how he appeared in the first American McGee’s Alice even though he was killed in that game. Spoiler!

It’ll be swell if this game is good, both because we’ll be able to have fun poking through these wonderful environments, and I’ll be able to use “Carroll Singing” as a headline. Screens after the jump.Read the rest of this entry »

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Back in the year 2000 (which was ELEVEN YEARS AGO, fact fans), I enjoyed American McGee’s Alice comprehensively, like you might a bacon sandwich. Foremost in my mind are the environments- the game was a tour through a tattered and bucking dreamscape, with unholy vistas around every other corner. Finally we have some in-game footage of this summer’s sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, and it gives me great pleasure to say that it’s looking swell. Follow me down the rabbit hole, ladies and gents.Read the rest of this entry »